‘Unlimited dollars’: how an Indiana hospital chain took over a region and jacked up prices

submitted a month ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/17/indiana…

In the nation’s most affordable metro area, getting hurt or sick is expensive

60
1

Log in to comment

5 Comments

This is the stuff I think about whenever people are murdered by cops for shoplifting or selling loose cigarettes. It's 100% legal to steal if you're doing it with a hospital via price gouging, or selling junk loans through a bank, or operating a casino.

It's also what I think about whenever someone talks about atrocities in Syria or rocket attacks in Israel. Here in America we kill our people in the civilized way: via capitalism, and we think it magically makes us more moral.

Ehh yeah capitalism but more like by contract.

This is why sovcits are such a prevalent thing in this country. Because so much of your life is based on contracts with the state or private orgs for various things.

Take hospitals. Yeah they gouge, because you sign a contract.
Speeding ticket? Contract.

Court order? Contract.

You're partially right tho. It's not illegal to sell people a shitty product for an exorbitant price when these ppl are desperate.

Revenue pressure was even brought down to the level of nurses – some of whom say they have been pushed to charge for the smallest of items from Kleenexes to batteries. One 2022 email, obtained by the Guardian, shows a supervisor at Parkview DeKalb telling nurses that she had reviewed their charts for the week and found they had “missed” $50,000 in charges as a team. The following year, managers told staff to be more stringent about how many linen towels they handed out to patients – an initiative they termed “linen stewardship”.

...

This fiscal year it found roughly $140m to pour into capital projects across greater Fort Wayne – investments that, a Moody’s report from July noted, will help further its goal of regional expansion.

Also mentioned in the article....some hospitals have their own private police forces.

Nickel and diming sick people has got to be the most ghoulish practice people defend as good business acumen.